50 fish pulled, then add 1 I found in the Rubbermaid after I returned the tank contents to the tank. I am not real happy about the number as it means 10 fry did not make it. That is 16% loss. On the other hand the fish turned out better than I expected.
173 is a really unusual Hypancistrus. If you see a single spawn of fry you would swear they were from differnet species and would not be able to identify which species. A year later things would not be a whole lot better. Some might show indications of the zig zag pattern that is so desirable. From there some will, but the best indication that this is where they are headed is when they start to look like zebras. However, if one knows zebras, they will say they are not zebras but are pretty close. from there the stripes morph into zig zags. This happens when they are old/big enough to spawn.
I was very lucky to come by the breeding group I have. They are 10 fish which I have good reason to believe are wild caught. When they arrived 9 had the classic zig zag but the 10th looked more like an L236. I was going to return it. But by the time I was ready to do so when I went to pull it, I could not find it. I had 10 fish all zig zag. That fish had morphed.
Earlier, I had also acquired a group of 14 tank bred l173 at about 1.75 inches. I do not know the source but based on shipping labels left on the box, they came from Germany. The parents were not wild fish. None of these showed the zig zag pattern when they arrived. They do today. I have watched them grow. I have reason to believe the parents of these fish were originally sent to a German breeder by the same person who sent me the 10 wilds.
The wild fish began to spawn for me long before the TR group. So I now had adult fish I had seen, I had 1.75 inch fish I had grown to spawning size, and then I got F1 fry I watched from birth until today. They are now likely the six fish group I pulled today have segregated. If not all of them are in this group, they are the biggest fish in second group of 7 I pulled and segregated.
I am really quite please with the quality of the fish I pulled today. it is better than I had expected. There were only a couple that did not look like they are headed towards or are already showing the zig zag pattern. Then there are a bunch that look really nice but may or may not morph into the lightning bolt striping.
The good news is I got pictures of them all (except the one in the Rubbermaid). I shot them in groups of 5 or 6 fish. I took a bunch of shots of every group- from 8 to 16 pics i think. I am dreading editing and uploading them. But there is no way folks will buy these guys at the going prices without seeing the exact fish they will receive. I will be selling a lot of mine for below market rates. However, I will not do so at prices which would allow folks to just flip them for profit. I want whomever gets them to want to spawn them down the road or to at least keep them longer term.
This is the culmination of an adventure that began about 21 years ago. When I began I swore I would never own any of those ugly looking sucker mouthed fish that I would see stuck to the glass, rocks etc. I never imagined that some of the most strikiing looking fish would be B&W instead of bright lovely colors until I received my first zebras.